Wednesday 12 July 2017

Patience, Printer and Cullen Skink.....

We are very close to the opening night of Patience now.........infact a week today we open at Kyleakin Hall. The fine group of principals rehearsed tonight until around 10.45pm, shows what dedication they have ! All those tricky moments where dialogue transitions from solos to ensembles and chorus moments. The bits which make most of us tongue tied, and those moments which stress us out infinitely more than the singing !

The dances are blocked, the humour is bubbling up like a spring from the earth, and it feels as if the show will knit together and begin to flow. It takes so much work to reach this point, and one often wants to remind an audience - who only ever see the finished article  of course - that it is months of hard work and sweat which have allowed us to arrive at this point. Of course the whole point is that an audience never sees the 'work', only the slick and well oiled result. 

I am very proud of the whole company. The way they have rallied once more in the face of a lost main role, the loss of set builders and crew including the place of building and painting, and the costume ladies grappling with Indian saris and British Army uniforms. It has been a tour de force of sheer will power, inventiveness and raw talent !

This is a super photo of my gallant crew, still smiling even at the end of a long rehearsal !



 I am so looking forward to my holiday which begins the day after the last night - but there is a part of me which does not want to allow that to overpower the pleasure and joy at seeing the show. Somehow thinking beyond the show seems in a small way to diminish the huge achievement.........so the holiday will come, but before that I want to fully appreciate what the team have produced, and let my pride in that be the most important thing. 

I have been wrestling with a new printer for the last two days. It was supposed to be a 'simple setup' and easy to hook up to the wifi and the Instant Ink contract, a piece of cake. Bah ! I was two hours trying on my own, then 78 minutes on the phone to the technical people being passed to different folk - all of whom were very helpful and did eventually sort it. A Ph D in Computing was probably the lowest qualification needed to get this printer moving in the right direction !

It is now up and running leaving a slightly distraught and exhausted owner and a wake of destruction! Now, so it seems, it will tell its maker ( not in Heaven you understand) when the ink is getting low, and as if by magic, the correct cartridges will be sent through the post to my door. I am not holding my breath, just keeping my piano playing fingers crossed that it all works !

I made cheesecake once more in my Instant Pot, and low and behold it worked and actually tastes like true New York Vanilla Cheesecake. Twice must mean that it does the job, and is not the fluke I half believed it might have been. I also made some delicious Cullen Skink, that glorious smoked haddock fish soup which I love so much. It makes it in 5 minutes once the onions have been fried a little. Some milk, butter, stock and smoked fish, plus bacon lardons if I have them, are all that is needed and hey presto utterly delicious soup. Two friends have now purchased one, and no, before anyone asks I am not on commission from Instant Pot . Com !

Honestly !



 

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